Thursday, March 22, 2012

Westbrook Dolphin Beaching

I've just come from the beach at Westbrook, where at lunchtime, a beached, North Atlantic, White-beaked Dolphin, was euthanised by a local vet.

Quite what it was doing here in the waters off Thanet is a mystery but it was injured, clearly from an encounter with a fishing net, which had damaged its flukes and it had fluid in its lungs, struggling to breathe, as well as being visibly malnourished.

Putting the Dolphin to sleep was the kindest thing to do in the circumstances and on the vet's advice but this was not an easy decision and a difficult task. I'm sure that I'm not alone in saying it caused visible emotion on the part of those who were trying to save the animal.

I can't thank the young lady volunteers from the local marine rescue enough for what they did and how hard they worked to try and save this beautiful animal. The paradox of a handful of volunteers trying to save a single Dolphin on our shores, while the Japanese and the Faroe islanders happily slaughter these intelligent, self-aware creatures in abundance, isn't lost on me.

The Dolphin fought very hard, right to the very end and to be perfectly honest, I could shed a tear or two of my own.

The Gazette's Andrew Woodman arrived in time to catch me for an impromptu video interview.

The team of volunteers are from the charity British Divers Marine Life Rescue. We are the UK's lead organisation in marine mammal rescue. We have over 3000 trained volunteer Marine Mammal Medics all over the UK. The team today consisted of Steve Grren, Gilli Graham, Suzi Hooper, Carla Tong and Kay Jenner. I am the east kent area coordinator and I was coordinating from Poole, as I was there for work. A great team effort which included the guys from Margate Coastguard. Regards Jon Brooks

Just as an update the body was taken to the Zooalogical Society of London (ZSL) by Steve n Gill. A Postmortem Examination will be carried out for CSIP ( Cetacean Stranding Investigation Programme) once I have the results I will post.

If you find a stranded whale seal or dolphin on the coast please call 01825 765545 (24 hours) oe if on the Thanet Coast call me 07931 744788

It was my husband who spotted the dolphin struggling in the shallow waters at about 8am. Not sure what to do we phoned the local police station who contacted the marine experts. I watched the struggle from our window and we have only just discovered the poor animal didn't survive. How sad. J